6 Mar 2014

Give Green Cars a Chance

Shing Hong Lin writes:*

There are many things that we can do to help our environment. To start, we must recognize earth is a common property for all of us. Without regulating the greenhouse gases that are produced by our technology, there will be increasing trend of global warming, which will lead to devastating consequences. A picture (to right) shows what may potentially occur in the event of global warming. An effective option to help our environment is to switch from conventional fuel powered cars to green cars based on three reasons: the idling emissions, the environmental impact of gas stations, and the feasibility of reducing green car prices.

Firstly, Idling emits a lot of unnecessary greenhouse gases. According to the government of Canada, "if Canadian motorists avoided idling for just three minutes every day of the year, greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by 1.4 million annually”. Most green cars are equipped with start-stop technology, which will prevent this sort of situation.

Secondly, the refuelling process of gas stations have a big impact on the environment. The process of transporting fuel generates a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, ev charge stations draw electricity from the power grid, which is usually from renewable energy and emits less greenhouse gases.

Thirdly, with enough support for green car development, the overall cost will be reduced due to economies of scale. An additional advantage for enlarging the market of green cars will likely result in a faster pace of green car technology development since they will have more funds to research and develop.

2 comments:

The first two point is about reduce greenhouse gases, the third is about the cost. After reading the blog, I realize that you try to convince people switch to green cars. It will be more persuasion if you can compare the greenhouse gas emission between conventional fuel powered cars and green cars, which shows the advantages of using green cars.

Hi, this is Shing who wrote Give Green Cars a Chance. Thanks for reading my blog post and commenting on it! Hope you enjoy it!

Just to clarify something, since I was running out of words to explain more in my second and third points.

The third point is not only about the cost, it is also about making the car more efficiency. With more people using this technology, there will be more development towards increasing the efficiency of the car, which will further increase the distance that a green car can travel with one charge. ( Tesla( car brand) was able to run 480km per charge.)

I did think of writing a comparison of the greenhouse gas emission between conventional fuel powered cars and green cars, which shows the advantages of using green cars. However, this will over complicate the matter, since depending on different regions, the result will be totally different. ( Also I am running out of the words)

Some regions get their gas station refuel from transportation of fuel from oversea. Then, they have to use heavy truck to reallocate those resources to different part of cities. All this process generates a lot of green house gas emission. Some other regions get their fuels directly underground, but they also export their fuels, which generates a significant amount of greenhouse gases as well. Thus, with different regions, it will have a different amount of emission for the green house gases.

Overall, I just want to generalize my points and hope if people were reading my post, they will think about the world and the decision they make. The reason why I choose to talk about the cars is because it is one of the most used transportation in the world. If we can somehow reduce emissions from this, then we can make a huge differences in the world.Sometimes, one does make a differences.